Saputo Stadium

Saputo Stadium sits close enough to downtown Montreal that CF Montreal built a football-specific ground rather than sharing an oval with the Alouettes, and that decision shapes everything about a matchday there: a tight, rectangular bowl with the natural grass pulled close to the touchline, no running track dulling the noise. The club moved in with a stadium built for its own purposes and never had to rent someone else's, which is rarer in North American soccer than it sounds.

It has not stayed still since opening. What began as a modest single-tier ground was expanded within a few years to close to double its original size, the kind of growth that usually only happens when a club outgrows its own ambitions. The corners were filled in, the upper tier added, and the result is a bowl that reads as complete rather than as a work in progress bolted together over time.

The address on Sherbrooke Street East places it in the city's east end, in Saint-Michel, away from the tourist core and closer to the neighbourhoods that actually fill the seats. It remains the only purpose-built football stadium of its scale in the city, which spares CF Montreal the scheduling conflicts that come with sharing a venue, and gives the club full control of the pitch and the calendar around it.